Tag: Interaction Design

I remember to have heard that Facebook is not cool anymore and that basically, it is a platform for old people. I have also come across (on Facebook) a figure showing that Facebook is still one of the platforms with more active users. Sorry, but I can’t remember who posted it, so I can’t put it here. However, if we go to Facebook’s Compay Info website, we can see that it had 1.23 billion daily active users on average for December 2016. Facebook seems to be distant from being a boring social media platform for old people. According to Zephoria, the most common age demographic on Facebook corresponds to people between 24 and 34 years old. Hey, that’s not being old!

I think the job posts feature is important. It is a reminder of how powerful Facebook is. It is a reminder that many of us are hyper-engaged with our mobile devices and screens. When I saw the ad, I could picture looking for a job while they commute back home or take their lunch break. I could picture social media managers considering serious strategies to make a company’s website look more solid so that any person will take its job posts seriously.

I think it is so interesting to see how any “screen connected to the internet” becomes a potential door for Facebook to become part of our everyday lives.

Have you seen videos from movies or cartoons showing that our future is living in a VR society? Well, have you noticed that we’re there already? Facebook is that VR society! We might not end up wearing VR headsets 24/7, but many of us are pretty trained to deal with a real life and a cyber life in parallel. Facebook is our virtual society in which commerce, professional development, and human relationships are being constantly redefined, add-on after after-on, version after version.

The ad might look naive. But, again, it is a reminder that Facebook is the social media par excellence. Sometimes, it could look like nothing of what we do on Facebook cares or matters in the real world. However, we keep going back to it. We seem to be ok with the idea of virtualizing business, activism, education, and of course, friendship on that humongous virtual world called Facebook.

It’s been a while since I have uploaded lectures slides on SlideShare. Here are some of the presentations that I have made for lecturing human-computer interaction and visual design for user experience. They are a sample of the themes I have taught at Indiana University Bloomington. However, I do hope you enjoy the slides and find them useful 🙂

Guest lecture for INFO-I 300. Instructor: Gopinaath Kannabiran.

“An expert subjectivity is needed in design, because “design professionals” require a cultivated ability to read socio-cultural signs and trends; a creative and reasoned ability to explore alternative futures; a verbal ability to articulate these activities; a receptiveness to alternative framings and a willingness to explore highly variable alternative directions; and above all a personal identity or coherence that holds all of these moving parts together through a given process.”

In the book, “Experience Design: Technology for All the Right Reasons” by Marc Hassenzahl (2010), there’s a section labeled, “Do needs have different priorities?” Below is last paragraph of that,

“Identifying situations, which imply the systematic deprivation of a need, is an important starting point for Experience Design. It is difficult to “sell” an experience of a certain type to somebody, who is already saturated. However, the true challenge for Experience Design is to fulfill needs without making this too obvious.” (Hassenzahl, 2010)

For some reason, this paragraph made think quickly of

Issues that I’ve experienced as educator and the possible relation between saturation and learning experiences,

the relevance of contrast in design and its use as a mechanism to avoid saturation,

and the connection between the use of a particular design and the so-called north-south in the sense that

even though the deprivation of needs occurs worldwide, it is likely that they result different for all the people or regions in the world,

and how that might imply that a design

just cannot guarantee a uniform user experience at all, or

it is important for any design to leave enough room for the users to adapt it and thus support the creation of a meaningful user experience.

ATTN: We have extended the submission deadline for the CHI 2016 Workshop on Visual Literacy & HCI to February 1st, 2016

Call for Position Papers: “Visual Literacy & HCI”
CHI 2016 Workshop to promote visual literacy as first class competency in HCI research and practice

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OBJECTIVE
=============================

The goal of this workshop is to develop ideas about and expand a research agenda for visual literacy in HCI.

By visual literacy, we mean the competency
(i) to understand visual materials,
(ii) to create visuals materials, and
(iii) to think visually.

There are three primary motivations for this workshop on visual literacy in HCI, namely
(i) to engage HCI researchers in the transformative dimensions of visual literacy with respect to modern digital technology
(ii) to assess the relevance and pervasive nature of visual artifacts in and as a consequence of HCI design, and
(iii) to promote visual literacy as a first-class competency in HCI research and practice.

This workshop will consist of paper and visual material presentations, critique, and structured discussion sessions. The overall goal is to detail a viable research agenda that investigates the persistent and emerging dimensions of visual literacy in HCI.

In the most general terms, we invite paper contributors to explain notions of visual literacy in terms of three main themes, namely

(i) Visual understanding
how are visual materials understood and explained in HCI research and practice?
(ii) Visual making
how are visual materials used in HCI prototypes and other forms of making?
(iii) Visual thinking
how is visual thinking different than textual thinking, and how does it augment notions of HCI?

There are a number of alternative themes or framings that are germane to visual literacy, namely

(i) Definitions
how may visual literacy be defined in terms of constituent dimensions and competencies?
(ii) Scale
how is the scale and pervasive nature of visual materials implicated in HCI?
(iii) Measure
how can we know what is entailed in claiming visual competence in HCI?
(iv) Transdisciplinarity
how can we transcend disciplinary boundaries with respect to the integration of concepts of visual literacy as they owe to various fields within and beyond HCI?

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ABOUT PARTICIPANTS
==================================
This workshop invites people focused on the development, use, and exploration of visual material in HCI, either in the context of research, design process, or outcome.

People working in the following areas, but not limited to these, may be interested in submit position papers:
* Visual literacy
* Visual thinking
* Design-oriented HCI
* Digital Imagery
* Data Visualization
* Information Visualization
* Interface Design
* Visual and Digital Rhetoric
* Communication Design
* Information Design
* Interactive Art & Media
==================================
FORMAT & GOALS
==================================
Participants are invited to contribute papers that present theories, frameworks, methods, and exemplars of visual literacy in HCI. The workshop aims to build a network of collaboration among those in the CHI community interested in promoting visual literacy in HCI research and practice. Through presentations and group activities, participants will propose the notion, dimensions, and future research directions for visual literacy in HCI. The workshop group activity will include hands-on, visually-oriented, methods to synthesize and present insights.

==================================
PARTICIPANT SELECTION CRITERIA
& REQUIREMENTS FOR IMAGERY
OR POSITION PAPERS
==================================
Physical presence of at least one author of each accepted position paper is required. To encourage the inclusion of thoughtful imagery, submissions have no page restrictions. Papers are to be submitted in the ACM archive format, ACM extended abstracts format, or the SIGCHI DIS pictorial format.

==========================================
WHERE TO SUBMIT IMAGERY OR PAPERS
==========================================
Submit your imagery or position paper to kyle@hcivisualliteracy.com

=======================
NOTE
=======================
All participants must register for both the workshop and at least one day of the conference.

As part of the course INFO-I300: Human-Computer Interaction Design in Indiana University, I’ve created a small tutorial about sketchnoting. This is the first time that I write down the rationale for the way in which I take notes. It was an insightful and interesting exercise. My quick insights are:

Sketchnoting helps to organize and synthesize information

Sketchnoting helps to develop metaphorical thinking

Sketchnoting helps to develop a personal visual coding for information

Tools are important (e.g., needle point marker, brush tip marker and good quality sketchbook)

Drawing skills are not that relevant. Notes should make sense to you first.

Consistency is a key aspect for sketchnoting

Based on my experience, the steps for good sketchnoting are:

Listen

Filter

Write down

Code visually

Relate content

I hope the tutorial shown below can be help you for anyone interested in sketchnoting.

Yesterday I came across a printed advertisement containing a QR code. It was in a bathroom, so you can imagine what I was doing while staring at it. I was peeing. I’ve been in a similar situation before, and it let me thinking about the reasons of why QR might not be that popular.

Scan me 🙂

I think that one reason is a translation issue. I mean changing from an abstract visual data/information to some data/information that a person can understand. When we observe QR codes, they basically mean or denote nothing. In that regard, why should a user need to carry out a set of steps to translate, discover what the QR code says? In that bathroom situation, why should I have to take my phone out, look for the appropriate app and scan the code? I can easily google the name of the restaurant by using the same device at that moment. It’d be faster! Those steps for translating the visual abstract data/information from the QR code into a form that a human can understand seem to be unnecessary.

Translation issue when interaction with a QR code

Nonetheless, I do think that QR codes provide an interesting opportunity to design for user experience. Imagine this, as some cameras can detect faces and smiles, it’d be great that our smartphones can detect the QR code and do something with it. Automatize something. For instance, imagine that once you scan the QR code, your phone downloads an app and feeds it with your personal data stored in the phone. Consequently, a restaurant knows “your taste” and offers you a bottle of wine, free desert, or takes into account to guide you in your search for similar restaurants elsewhere.

What experience can we design for QR codes?

We have the QR codes. They’re design is there. It’s restrictive. However, I little bit of imagination could bring us to exploit the use of QR codes better. They were invented for some reason. And people are still using them for some reason. An interesting UX design space seems to be there to explore and re-think the purpose and UX with QR codes, including how to make that translation issue seamless or better, get rid of it.

One of the key challenges of being involved in a humanities & design-oriented perspective of Human-Computer Interaction is defining what design (or Design) is. I think that having an operational definition for Design is healthy. It is not only about divagating, philosophizing, or making the word Design to look more scientific—this is, to convert it into something observable and measurable within a certain space, which has its own axioms and laws. It’s also about understanding what being a designer—in a professional sense—means. What’s an Experience Designer? An Interaction Designer? Is it different from an Information Architect? Isn’t a UI Designer an Experience Designer? Coming up with a single answer it’s not an easy task nonetheless. However, thoughts and words are there to shape and play with reality, and hence to understand our human constructions better. So, below I present a quick definition of what design is.

Design is the conjunction of problem framing, externalization and materialization, and communication.

Design understood as the conjunction of problem framing, externalization and materialization, and communication.

These are my simple approaches to each of these dimensions:

Problem Framing

The designer should decompose the design situation (i.e., analysis) in order to understand it, and make a connection about how the current context, current needs, and current users are related to her past projects and personal experiences (i.e., abduction). Nevertheless, I think that separating problem framing from the other two dimensions during a design process is impossible. If so, we’re not talking about Design. We might be talking about problem solving only.

Externalization and Materialization

A design process cannot escape from representation. The rationale behind the problem framing, and hence the design solution must be externalized, communicated, instantiated. In this regard, the designer should find the means to support her argument. Her understanding of how to synthesize information or how to play with the materials is relevant to make a connection with the client, users, stakeholders, and also with herself.

Communication

The designer creates communication pieces, messages. This is evident in terms of the design outcome and the deliverables by which a designer supports her arguments. These are closely related to the dimension of externalization and materialization. Moreover, every design project entails people interacting. Design projects of any size will imply, at least, a relation between a designer, a client, and user. Part of the design process is to balance this relation. Perspectives, values, interests, and even whims take part in design processes. Therefore, the designer should employ communication skills to play the role of mediator, and understand how she, as a person, in combination with the messages she creates, will achieve that balance.

So far, this operational definition helps me to understand design in a simple way. Furthermore, it also helps me to understand the role of experience designers as rhetoricians; and idea I’m still developing as part of HCI research agenda.

Note: Thanks to Jordan and Marty for the conversations about [design/Design/designing]. I would bet this definition will evolve.

One interesting thing about social media is that users can notice behavioral trends about themselves. We can see how our timelines are affected by major events such as the Oscars Ceremony Award or the World Cup. Not only we get retweets and shares, but also new content is generated. Either unpublished or recycled. Pictures, videos, and memes. They’re everywhere within social media. However, as any organism, information gets born,grows, and eventually, it fades out.

Do you remember how popular selfies got after the Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie at the Oscars? Selfies has been part of Facebook, but definitely got burst after her picture. Selfies then started to become annoying. It seems that Instagram and the use of its filters have gone in the same direction. Also, we can add to the list the whining through social media, or the flood of cute cats pictures. On the other hand, it seems now that one function of social media is complementing Google, since their users are now asking about things in order to inform their decisions. Also we can note that social media is becoming an informal marketplace. Therefore, we can see social media as an interface in which multiple contexts affect themselves through the generation, modification, exchange, propagation and eradication of information. Of course, all these actions have an impact back to those contexts. They affect the real world.

The social media and the real world altogether affect the former, at least in terms of content and the usage of such content. Trends are consequence of these user-driveninformation management. And also, users kill those trends eventually, regardless of the actual agency they are supposed to have. Yet, social media, by means of current massive content in each of these contexts, dictates what is on fashion. And eventually when such massive content will not be in fashion anymore. It’s just like the comic strip by the Oatmeal shown below. No one likes selfies (now) (?).

What does this mean, and why do we need to care? There’s no simple answer whatsoever. That’s why many people try to understand the related phenomena from different perspectives, including HCI and Design. However, I really enjoy the idea of seeing that information is alive. It’s somehow organic. We can see how we apparently affect social media content, and how social media content affect us, and hence the real world. The trends have rhetorical implications for us. The Facebook that will be experienced in USA this 4th of July, because of the Independence Day, won’t be the same as the Facebook experienced in Brazil whilst the World Cup keeps going. Our understanding of the world, what shapes our culture, and what modifies our values are subject to this creation and dead of information. And still, I cannot avoid questioning myself, what’s our role, as users, in this phenomenon?

If you want to know how this phenomenon could be related with design, or user experience design, my colleague Azadeh Nematzadeh and I recently presented a paper in the Design Research Society Conference 2014 about some theoretical concepts by which we try to explain this connection. Please, give the paper a look. Thanks!

Google has launched its new design guidelines called “Material Design”. The name caught my attention, since I’m convinced, as visual designer, that observable pixels are really material to play; that is, to create user interfaces. What’s the possible meaning of this called design language?

Well, I bet that my understanding of observable pixels as actual material is not new or unfamiliar to other visual interaction or information designers whatsoever. Also the principles that lead material design. Yet, Google takes advantage of this metaphor to easily convey the role of visual design in systems design, interaction design, experience design, or whatever name you want to pick. Besides, material and design is a hot topic in Human-Computer Interaction research. I think that Google is not saying something new. However, by talking about material, Google attempts to foreground the value of the interface in the success of their products. This is not a naive viewpoint. It represents a Google’s stance before its competitors; in particular, I’d point out to Apple. Hence, material design is a business strategy, similar to others in the last decade, in which design is a marketable entity that is supposed to make a difference. A design-laden discourse that is getting worn out more and more.

Illustration for the principle of meaningful motion in Google’s Material Design guidelines

Don’t get me wrong though. I think material design is both appealing and useful for the Google’s IxD/UX community. Yet, I glimpse material design as that medium by which Google can create this design-driven cult, à la Apple. It’s unavoidable. Steve Jobs as the material signifier of profitable design for technology is gone. It’s a tough war out there. And Google of course that wants a big piece of the mobile apps cake.

Illustration for the principle of emphasize actions in the Google’s material design guidelines

As a HCI researcher interested on metaphors and visual design for interfaces, these are my quick insights from this case:

Metaphors are effective. Moreover, they can help to unify concepts and actions that are supposed to be understood already. The simple metaphor of material design is an example of this effectiveness that also shows the benefits at a business level.

Visual design might be an old and many time revisited topic. Yet, it’s necessary to state the principles that will lead the visual design in interaction/experience design. In this regard, I argue for paying more attention to visual design, particularly as study object in HCI.

Visual design might be taken for granted for clients, users, and other stakeholders. Yet, it’s clear that conforming a design language is necessary in the IxD/UXD professional practice to build a branding umbrella. IxD/UXD/HCI pedagogy should take this aspect into account and educate future designers with the better understanding of visual principles, both static and dynamic, and the connections not only with the interface design, but also with other communication aspects, such as branding.

I wonder what my very experienced colleagues think about material design. Cheers!